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…And Dream My Dreams of You

by Jay B.

Chapter 1

Jake turns his face up to meet mine. He’s sprawled out on a deck chair and his chest is bare. I kneel down beside him while he smiles at me with a kind of friendly and mysterious slyness and traces a finger along the curve of my ear—pausing just where it joins my neck—then moves down to the slight hollow at the base of my nose and the top of my lips. I close my eyes and smell suntan lotion, then taste it fleetingly as the finger slips into my mouth before continuing down over my lips and chin. When I open my eyes again the soft gold of the sunset shimmers through my lashes. The sun has come to rest on top of the backyard fence: long shadows are cast about the yard and tangerine ripples tremble on the surface of the pool. Jake licks his lips and sweeps the hair out of his face while his other hand dangles lazily in the carpet of grass that looks almost black the fading light. He looks beautiful all relaxed and spread out like this.

I reach over to touch him, to see what his body feels like. He gives a relaxed sigh and moans as my hand brushes across his chest. I touch him there for a while, until he pushes himself up and—in a single motion of such smoothness and fluency that it hardly registers as having happened—he stands behind me, gently maneuvering me onto my knees on the lounge with one hand, sliding his pants and swimsuit down with the other. Then I feel his dick pressed against me. I want to tell him to stop, that I’m not a bottom, that I’m afraid, before I realize I’m not anything, top or bottom, and that this is my first time and suddenly it doesn’t seem to matter what’s going on, just that he’s close to me. I steady myself for the pain but as he enters me I realize that it doesn’t hurt at all. Just a sheet of raw pleasure cascading along his body and through to mine, that’s all I feel.

“Ah, God, Jake, I love you, I love you…” I whisper.

“I love you too, buddy,” he replies, his voice even deeper and more raw than I remembered it and he begins to thrust into me slowly.

The lawn is black and glossy and gold from the sun is scattered over everything. A plane punctuates the long curving axis of a contrail in the sky above, where the clouds are set adrift in a calm and flame-colored sea, and I watch detachedly as two blue wings speed rapturously towards the thin slice of remaining sun. Such pleasure…

“I love you so much,” he says again, “but we shouldn’t be doing this.”

“No, no it’s fine. It feels so good!” I moan, now somewhere between indescribable pleasure and indescribable agony as I realize what is happening. I feel it welling up inside me.

“We shouldn’t be doing this, Paul,” he hisses. “We shouldn’t, something’s coming to an end and we shouldn’t, we shouldn’t we…”

And for the third time that week I woke up covered in my own cum, having just been magnificently fucked by my best friend in some wonderful dreamland. The alarm clock buzzed and I felt cold where my chest and stomach were wet.

"Fucking hell," I muttered and reached over to shut the alarm up. "God fucking damn it! I can't believe this shit…"

It felt good to get under the shower, to close my eyes and pretend that the warmth and me were all that existed in the world. But reality intruded pretty quickly and I realized I had a serious problem on my hands. This little dream of mine was getting out of hand. The first time it had been nice, but ten or so times later it was starting to scare the hell out of me—not so much the sex part, I enjoyed that; or the gay part, I could deal with that OK—but the Jake part: that was bad. Every time it was him in my dream, looking so stunning I could barely stand it. And now the dreams were starting to intrude on reality; he'd say something that reminded me of something he'd said in the dream or look at me in a way that seemed tantalizingly familar and I'd suddenly have a huge fucking hard-on that I had to hide.

I was even starting to wonder if he noticed something was up with me. He kept asking me if I was OK all the time. Usually I'd just try to imagine myself far away, or maybe just so small or invisible no one could see me, and how could I possibly answer his question? Sometimes I just wanted to yell at him—tell I hated him, tell him to leave me the hell alone—but I couldn't do that to him. So instead I would play it off and change the subject as quickly as I could. I finished showering and got out. My watch read quarter to seven. Shit, late already.

I can’t really remember when it all started. It’s been a while, though, and now I can’t imagine life without him. Jake: the center point around which various images of me converge. Here he is, the only boy who took the trouble to get to know a shy but grateful kid who’d just moved to town; and here, almost a brother to a typical and slightly-bewildered only-child; and finally, best friend of four years to a boy mostly the opposite of whatever he was. The amount of time we spent with each other would probably seem weird or unlikely to anyone who didn’t know how close we were, but there it was. I’ve thought about it and I think it started when his parents broke up four years ago. It was pretty nasty, and he was caught in the middle of it with no one to talk to. He started spending more and more time at my house (mainly because he didn’t want to go home) and I let him stay. I’m normally pretty shy. When I'd moved to town I had no friends and couldn't seem to make any. My parents practically forced me to tryout for the soccer team and that was how I met Jake. He played striker, was very well-liked and for some reason took a liking to me. Maybe it was just some reciprocal feeling of thankfulness for befriending me, but when his home life started to fall apart I tried to step in and pick up the slack. I got him to talk to me when he didn’t seem to want to because I knew that, secretly, he did and I felt I owed it to him to listen.

The other reason, the one I had always been ashamed of and would have died for rather than tell anyone, was that I was attracted to him physically. I was afraid I might gay before that but my attraction to him was so real and so visceral that it brought the point home. Jake was clearly straight, so I just set it aside and learned to live with his friendship alone. And that had been enough for four years. Girls had come and gone with him—never anything serious; it was high school, after all—but we'd stayed friends, gotten even closer, in fact. I saw him most every day and I could usually tell what he was thinking, almost like he was my twin. I know my parents thought of him more as a part-time son than a friend of mine and I knew his father and his little sister felt the same about me. And that's how it had been for a long time: a kind of equilibrium settled in and I had everything under control.

And now, I go away for two months to California for summer vacation and suddenly I can't get him of my mind. Well, it's not really that simple. I think not seeing him for that time just made it obvious what was already going on: I'd fallen hard for Jake. Sometimes the desire seems so strong that I almost can’t put it aside like I’ve always done. On top of that there’s these stupid dreams and I don't know what to do about them. I'm so afraid all the time that I'll slip up around him. Its not even that Jake's a huge homophobe, no worse than most other kids anyway; it's just what would naturally flow out of his knowing I'm gay: his knowing that I love him. That would be clear as day and I don't think he'd be cool with that; sometimes I can't believe he hasn't seen it already.

I got to school with about ten minutes to spare. First period was English and I had just enough time to swing by my locker and get my novel. Our class was supposed to have chosen a novel to read and report on and the teacher would be approving them today. I had picked Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire. My Dad had recommended it after he saw me reading Lolita, which was difficult but really awesome, I thought. I should confess that I turn sort of geeky when it comes to books and writing, but otherwise I think I tend to be pretty cool, and popular enough, I guess. Being best friends with Jake helps that a lot. I put the book in my bag and also got out my writing notebook. I have a study hall second period and I like to use that time to work on one of a few stories I'm always trying to write, all of which I keep in this green spiral bound notebook. Most of what I had written so far was terrible, but there was one story I was working on which had potential, if for no other reason than it helped me deal with some of my feelings for Jake. The whole thing was basically a thinly veiled story about him and me, and was probably much too personal for me to ever think of showing to anyone, but it kept me sane and helped me to look at the situation a little more clearly. I shoved the notebook in my bag and looked around nervously. I began to wonder where he was. Jake would usually swing by my locker in the morning before we went our separate ways. I sighed, preparing to head off to class without getting to see him. Then I heard a familiar voice:

"Paul, what's up?"

Jake is, to put it simply, a beautiful-looking man. I mean, yeah, he’s beautiful inside and all that but…let’s just say he makes a helluva good first impression too. Any girl at school (and probably a few guys) could give you the reasons it off the top of their head: he's tallish, tanned and ripped and there's an almost artistic handsomeness about his face: strong jawed, with full lips and green eyes that have and slightly feminine slant. His hair is dark and slighly wavy and glows in the sun like it's been polished. In the last year or so a hint of beard has appeared on his chin stretching up to his statuesque cheekbones--though he shaves it--and even the younger female teachers stutter a bit or drop their chalk when he’s nearby.

These are the things anyone notices, I guess, but what I really love are the little imperfections that somehow conspire to make him even hotter. When he smiles you can see this cute little scar on his chin that dimples in a bit. His lips are slightly, perpetually chapped in the fall and the winter even though he uses chapstick, and when he gets really tired or drunk one eyelid gets a little droopier than the other.

It's occurred to me I should really be jealous of him, being blessed with the fucking "perfect gene" and all, but I would really rather be close to him rather than actually be him. There was something comfortable about his confidence. It was real, and mixed with a great deal of kindness. I never heard him put anyone down for anything but being cruel or a bully. He didn't seem to give a damn about popularity, and so he was of course irreversibly, effortlessly popular.

And now he was smiling at me. His black hair had gotten a bit longer as the summer wound down and he looked very cool.

“I’m doing OK,” I said. “Didn’t think I’d see you this morning.”

“Yeah, I was running late.”

“Me too,” I murmured.

“Hey, bro, I’m gonna make your day. Guess what?”

“I dunno…what?”

“Birthday party,” he whispered.

“Huh?”

“For you, Paul. You’re gonna celebrate your eighteenth like it should be celebrated.”

“How’s that?” I asked and he laughed.

“Drunk as hell, baby!”

“Uh huh…um, last time I checked you don’t have a fake and your dad and my parents would never let us throw something like that.”

“I talked to Alan.”

“The party monster?” I asked.

“Uh huh. His parents are out of town and his brother Brian is coming down from college. ‘Told him I’d pay him for the keg and stuff.”

“Whoa, whoa, are you fucking serious?”

“Yeah, why?” He asked. I think he thought I was mad or something.

“You did this?”

“We’ll I’ll get you a fucking present too. I just thought you should have a real party.”

“Nah, dude, I’m not disappointed. Damn, I fuckin’ love you man!”

Whoops.

“…I mean, in a…you know…brotherly sort of way,” I added.

“Yeah, brotherly. Sure.” He laughed. “You know I always look out for you.”

“I know. I don’t know what to say…”

“Don’t worry about it. Hey, you want to help me?,” he asked, “Explain what the hell is going on in calculus, 'cause I am fucked for the quiz tomorrow if I don’t figure it out.

“We’ll do it after school,” I told him.

“I got practice…”

“Well, after that, then.”

“Thanks, bud. Aw shit, gotta go. See you later.”

And with that he was off. Damn, I only had about a minute to get to class too.

The teacher started going around okaying our books right as class started and while I waited Liz, a friend of mine, turned around to chat.

“Hey cutie, hear you’re having a party.”

“Word gets around fast.”

“Yeah, Jake’s been telling everybody.”

“Since when?” I asked, a bit surprised.

“Oh, I dunno, since this morning. It’s gonna be quite a bash, I hear.”

“I guess. I just found out.”

She laughed.

“Aw, he’s so cute. He was all excited about telling you.”

“Anyway…what else’s up?” I said steering the conversation to safer waters.

Liz shrugged and bit her lip.

“What?” I asked.

“Oh, nothing,” she said, “I just learned an interesting fact this morning.”

“Wanna share?”

“Depends. When we finally end up writing papers on these stupid books, will you proofread mine? You always get the highest grades on these.”

“Sure. Now what the hell is so interesting?

Liz looked around, then lowered her voice.

“You know Kelly? No, no don’t look at her! She’ll see you.”

“Yeah, I know her.”

“OK, she likes you. She thinks you’re cute.”

Kelly: pretty girl, played volleyball, blonde, very pretty actually. But not my type. If she had a brother maybe… Honestly, my heart sunk. Sure, most guys would love to find out Kelly McGore was interested in them and I was definitely flattered, but something like this had the potential to made life difficult. I wasn’t out, but I had no intention of trying to lie to a girl just to fit in either.

“Cool.” I said.

“That’s it? C’mon, she must have figured I’d tell you. I don’t know her that well and she told me. Why don’t you ask her out?”

“Well, I don’t really know her.”

“That’s why you ask her out, just a date at least,” Liz whined. “C’mon, when’s the last time you had a girlfriend?”

“I don’t know…a year…” I ventured.

“…or two. God, I’m practically pimping her out for you,” Liz laughed. Fortunately at that moment, the teacher, Mr. Cohen, got to me.

“So, what did you pick Mr. Matheson?” he asked.

“Oh, got it right here.” I handed him the book. He glanced at it and looked a little surprised.

“Oh, well, this is an earlier novel than Lolita. Difficult, too, but in a slightly different way. But if anyone can get through it here, I’m sure you can. We’ll talk more once you’ve gotten into it.”

At lunch everyone kept mentioning my party. Mostly, I figured it was ‘cause Jake was putting the whole thing together, but I was still flattered. Alan, in particular, kept going on about how he hadn’t thrown a real party in forever and how awesome it was going to be.

The rest of the day went well. I managed to not say anything stupid around Jake, which was pretty nice. Last period of the day was French. I was frantically rummaging in my locker for the homework the teacher had actually assigned the day before the test when Jake came up.

“Hey dude. Were you serious about calc? You know, studying together.”

“Sure, we’ve done it before…” I said.

“Yeah, right, right. Cool.”

Did he sound nervous about something? I didn’t have time to ponder.

“Shit, where is my damn homework?” I asked.

“I dunno. Hey, did you take notes on today’s calc lecture? I think I spaced out for some of it.”

“You know I did.”

“Can I borrow them? I’ve got study hall next period and I thought I’d try and figure some of the stuff out on my own.”

“Yeah sure, whatever. Notebook’s in my backpack,” I muttered, kneeling amongst the pile of crap I’d pulled out of my locker. “Fucking hell! How does a paper just vanish like this?” By the time it turned up—in my history book, of all places—I was five minutes late starting the test.

Finally, the day was over. Now I got to spend some real quality time with Jake. I drove home and stopped in to say hi to mom and check my email, and hung around waiting till he got home from practice. Jake only lived four or five blocks away from me. It was late September, but it was still decently warm while the sun was up so I decided to walk. He wouldn’t mind giving me a ride home later.

Jake lived with his dad and little sister. In fact, Mr. Benningfield was just coming back from dropping Katie off at soccer practice.

“Hey Mr. B. What’s up?”

“Not much, Paul. How’s you parents?”

“Good. Just going to do some studying with Jake.”

“Great, he needs it.”

“Yeah, well, he’s doing OK with calc this year so far. I’ll make sure he aces the class.”

“I’m sure you will, Paul. And I appreciate it.”

I went up to Jake’s room. His door was shut, so I knocked and heard him say, “come in.”

“You look weird,” I laughed, but to be honest I was the one who felt a little creepy. Something wasn’t right and somewhere in the back of my head someone was yelling Oh shit! He knows. He knows your secret! But that was crazy. How could he?

“Come on,” I told him, “you’d better get your calc book and stuff out, we’ve got a lot of studying to do.” I started rifling through my bag for my textbook. “Did you get to look through my notes?” I asked.

When he answered, his voice was quiet and ominously flat. “You gave me the wrong one.”

“Huh?”

“The notebook; you gave me the wrong notebook,” he said, a little louder. In an instant, and with a sickening sensation, I knew: the notebook I’d given him—my green calculus notebook, I thought—was not my calculus notebook at all. It had been the one with my writing in it. My hands shook and I quickly shoved them in my pockets.

He reached over and picked the notebook up, handling it deliberately. He opened it to the first story. That was good, nothing to give me away in that one. Oh please God, I thought, just let him have stopped at that one. The voice in the back of my head called back: you aren’t that lucky.

“You wrote this?” He asked without looking at me.

“Uh, yeah; you like it?”

“It was OK.” He stopped for a second and then flipped forward to the next one.

“And this one, this one yours too?”

“Yeah.” And then he continued, page after page—grimacing like he was doing it against his will—until he came to the one. I stepped back.

“And this …did you write this too?”

I nodded, but I he still wasn’t looking at me.

“Huh, did you?” he repeated.

“Yeah,” I almost whispered. “Umm, I guess…did you…”

“You know it’s kinda weird,” Jake interrupted calmly, looking at me for the first time and talking like it was a little speech he had already rehearsed, “the main character—not the narrator but the other one, the guy the narrator is in love with—he seemed really familiar.”

“Huh, Really? No, I just…just made him up out of thin air. Just a story,” I said, knowing my bullshit denial wasn’t fooling anyone. I could barely even say it, it sounded so hollow.

“The guy. What was his name? Tyler? He seemed really familiar to me. And I guess,” Jake looked down again, his face perfectly composed but his voice sounding like he was about to loose it, “I guess it was like looking in a mirror, kinda? Especially here, when he’s…when he’s kissing the narrator and you accidentally wrote his name as Jake instead of Tyler.”

“It…um, well, it still needs editing,” I said. Jake stood up and when he looked at me this time, his face was a mask of rage.

“Is this true?”

“Look, Jake I don’t know what to…”

“Is this what you are? All this time, you’ve been lying? All this time you’ve been a fag?”

“Jake, it’s just a story, OK? Let’s just forget about it, all right?”

“Forget what? That you’ve got a fucking crush on me? On you best friend?” He spat the words out and tossed the book at my feet. “How the hell am I supposed to just forget about this, huh?”

“C’mon Jake, let’s just, you know, calm down, chill out. Look, it’ll be like it never happened. I won’t say anything, you won’t say anything. It’ll be just like it always has. Jake, please…”

“Are you fucking kidding me? How am I supposed to ignore the fact that you're a homo? Not only that, but a homo who wants to fuck me?” he yelled. All of a sudden, I felt anger spring up where I had only been afraid a moment before.

“Hey, fuck you! You think I like being this way? You think I chose this?” I picked up the notebook and held it up. “This doesn’t change anything. This is not all I am, OK? I fought it and fought it, hard as I could. And I never—not even once in four years—said a damn word to you. Not one. I haven’t touched you, I haven’t ever done anything but be your friend, all right?”

“No, not all right man, not all right at all. I can’t believe you would lie to me like this.”

“Yeah, well that’s ‘cause I knew you would freak out, just like you’re doing. And so what if I’m…like this? Don’t I get to be happy like everyone else? Don’t I get to have friends like everyone else? Just because a part of me is different and I can’t do anything about it, I have to be a fucking looser? I have to be one of those kids everyone beats the shit out of ‘cause he’s a faggot, and everyone hates? Fuck that. That’s why I never told you.”

“You don’t even know. I’m not…”

“The fuck I don’t, you stupid shit. I’ve heard you cracking jokes about fags with the other guys. Don’t pretend like you’re cool with it if you’re not. I’m not asking for your fucking pity, all right?” I said.

He looked down at his feet for a while, and then sat down on the bed. He sat there for a long time without saying anything then stood up and got right up in my face, just watching me out of two eyes that were barely slits.

“Uh, Jake…” I said.

“Do you…did you love me?” He asked quietly.

“No,” I said. But he wouldn’t stop looking at me, waiting, and I knew that he knew I was lying. “I dunno. Yes,” I said, “I guess I love you.” I hadn’t really wanted to say it out loud, but it didn’t seem to matter at this point.

“You’re sick,” he spat. Without a second thought, my fist shot out and hit him on the jaw. He staggered back and sat on the bed. I knew Jake had at least forty pounds and a couple of inches on me and I prepared myself to get the shit beat out of me. It was worth it just to see the shocked look in his eyes: I’d never hit him before and he just stared for a minute stupidly, then leapt up and knocked me against the wall, his hand around my throat, the other hand drawn back into a fist. For one absurd moment, I found myself looking at his muscular forearm, crisscrossed with downy black hairs, the veins standing out on his arm and hand, and even then I desired him, and felt disgusted for it at the same time. He didn’t hit me but held his hand back, ready to. We stared at each other, and as I looked at his sweaty red face I felt laughter bubble up suddenly, absurdly.

“Go ahead,” I said, grinning like a fucking idiot, really on the edge. “Go ahead, and hit me. You think you can beat it out of me, go ahead and try.” He just stared.

“C’mon, it’ll feel good. Make me pay for feeling this way about you, make me pay f-for…” I couldn’t say it; I just couldn’t finish the sentence. He knew anyway, I think. He had a horrified look on his face—guilt for what he’d almost done, I hoped—and he let me go. He sat down on his bed looking completely defeated, which was odd considering he wasn’t the one who’d just had his heart torn out.

“Thanks,” I said and slung my bag over my shoulder. I reached for the door, but something inside me cried out that I couldn’t leave it this way. He might be an asshole but he’d been my best friend for four years. I turned around and went over to him.

“Alright, I’m gay. I can’t deny it, and I won’t anymore, but that doesn’t make me any less of a man. And I’m sure as hell not fucking ‘sick,’ got it? And I’m sorry I lied, but I guess I had a pretty good reason. You ask yourself if you would have done any different and see what answer you come up with.” He didn’t say a thing, wouldn’t even look at me.

“I was always a good friend, and I always respected you. Even when I loved you—and yeah, I guess I’ve loved you for a long time—I was still your friend. When I cared about you I…I cared about you as a friend, too. It wasn’t just me wanting you like, physically. It was because I was your friend, and you were mine. I know you don’t want me the way I want you, I’ve always known that. So I’ve just had to deal with it. Why can’t you do the same?”

He didn’t answer, but he tilted his face up to mine. I would have given everything just to hold him, to take away the pain I saw and the fact that I couldn’t do that, could never do that again because of him, was just to painful to bear.

“Goodbye, Jake,” I said and left.

I walked back downstairs feeling like everything was underwater and I was swimming in it. How weird: this was the last time I’d walk down these stairs. I looked at the family pictures hung up in the hallway, my own face pressed next to Jake’s in a few of them. Mr. Benningfield was in the den watching TV. He must not have heard anything because he looked up at me and smiled.

“Leaving so soon, Paul?”

“Yeah, bye Mr. Benningfield.”.

“See you later, son,” he said. I tried to smile back. No you won’t, I thought, not ever again.

It was still light outside, but the sun seemed to be sinking into the trees and it threw an orange glare across the lawn. It was starting to get cold now and I shivered, realizing I’d forgotten my jacket. I felt like I was in a dream and I kept trying to concentrate on every image that passed before me—on the three or four red leaves floating in the Benningfield’s birdbath, on the way my hands looked ruddy and thin in the evening light, on the way that the neighborhood seemed so still and quiet that I could almost believe I was the only person left in the world—and I wished that these few simple things would be all that I had left, all I could remember until someone could come and take me apart, break me up in into a thousand pieces and whisk me a million miles away from here. And when they put me together again, I would be different, and every one and everything would be different too. Fuck all this drama, fuck the lies, and most of all, I thought, fuck you Jake.